Open Educational Resources, Open Courseware and MOOCs All strategic workshops start by clearly defining the subject at hand. The following definitions and descriptions are discussed: For years, open universities and institutions for distance education have been responding to the need for distance education and lifelong learning. The digital revolution has added to this open education an innovative, burgeoning world of OER, Open Courseware and Massive Open Online Courses. ‘Traditional’ Open Education is characterised by accessibility, i.e. a lack of admission requirements. Participants complete the course (or a full curriculum) at their own pace. Often there are no requirements for physical attendance or to start by a fixed date. Digital openness adds two special Share and share alike - Fontys ‘Fontys has a great deal of expertise when it comes to open and online education. Small-scale experiments were also being carried out, however we still did not have any Fontys-wide policy’, explains Economics Information Manager Xxxxxxx van den Xxxxx from Fontys Universities of Applied Sciences. The aim of the Fontys strategic workshop was to investigate whether there is an institution-wide need for open and online education. Fontys consists of thirty institutions that prepare students for a variety of careers. All these institutions work at their own pace on educational innovation, and with their own understanding of this field. Xxx xxx Xxxxx believes that the strength of the workshop lies in the diversity of the groups present: lecturers, directors, policymakers, information management staff, but also staff from support services such as Education and Research, IT and Marketing & Communication. ‘What we all had in common at the end of the workshop was the conviction that Open Education is developing fast, and that Fontys needs to get involved’, she says. ‘The strategic workshop also revealed that we find it important to share knowledge throughout Fontys on experiments that are currently underway, and to create an overview of what types of support are needed. Participants had different ideas on the added value for education. Are we going to use Open Education as a supplement to existing education, for remedial courses, for example? Or will entire curricula be offered this way in the future?’ As a result of the strategic workshop, the Education and Research Committee at Fontys was asked to devote attention to OE. Fontys also organised a follow-up meeting involving knowledge exchange on the experiments currently ...
